The Great North Wood

by Tim Bird

Overview

Long ago the whole of Southern England was covered in forest. Over time, this woodland has been gradually cut back, but small patches remain amidst the suburban sprawl of South-East London. A few ancient oaks still stand in gaps between housing estates, alongside railway lines and acting as boundary markers on roundabouts.

The history and magic that once filled the ancient forest can still be felt even when the trees are long gone. Memories of the Great North Wood are recorded in the place names – Forest Hill, Honor Oak, Norwood. This graphic novels tells the stories of the bandits, outlaws and gypsies that once roamed the forest. Their presence can sometimes be felt when the hum of the city is quiet.

Tim Bird’s psychogeographical work depicts how memories live on in the landscape of The Great North Wood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910395363
Publisher:	Avery Hill Publishing
Publication date:	09/01/2018
Pages:	68
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.17(d)

About the Author

Tim Bird is an illustrator and comic artist based in London.
He publishes the webcomics Rock & Pop and It's A Bird's Life, and does a cartoon strip called Effra Tales for the Brixton Bugle.
In 2015 he won 'Best Comic' in the British Comic Awards for Grey Area - From The City to the Sea.

Editorial Reviews

06/04/2018
Bird’s longest work since his British Comic Award–winning Grey Area is a breathlessly romanticized depiction of London’s once great forest, the Great North Wood. Though much has been destroyed to make way for industrialization, Bird sees evidence and echoes of his ancestral forest everywhere. Speaking through a wandering fox, Bird ushers readers on a tour of London past and present, noting where vague traces of the Wood still linger in borough boundaries, place names—and, in the case of Sydenham Hill Woods, where “nature took back the land, and the magic started to return.” The deceptively simple cartoons belie a rich, lovingly doodled set of landscapes and vignettes that effortlessly reflect the folklore Bird references. But although his visual storytelling is a delight, Bird fumbles with how to handle the Romani people in his narrative of Gipsy Hill—reprinting long-used racial slurs (a character calling themselves “gypsy”) without analysis, ignoring the historically adversarial relationship between the English and the Romani, and erasing that identity from the folktale “The Story of Ned Righteous.” Despite evocative visuals and an obvious passion for the material, Bird’s rose-colored glasses limit the accuracy of his work, giving it a dated, quaint, feel. (June.)

Publishers Weekly

A magnificent meditation on hidden history. Bird has concocted a beautiful book with invigorating research and poetic observation. It’s brief and deceptively simple, but it gives a sprawling examination of human history — and the human future — in terms of artful depth that might inspire any of us to take a closer look around at our surroundings.”
- The Beat

'A rich, lovingly doodled set of landscapes and vignettes that effortlessly reflect the folklore Bird references'
- Publishers Weekly

'Bird does a tremendous job of blending the modern with the historic and the fantastical.'
- Big Comic Page

From the Publisher